Horseshoe Crab

Creature — Crab

{U}: Untap Horseshoe Crab.

Combos

• Birds of Paradise + Experiment Kraj + Horseshoe Crab

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

j0k3rzinhu on Defensive Ping Deck

1 year ago

wow awesome, i built a similtar deck about 20 years ago too! it used Horseshoe Crab and Hermetic Study to ping everything to death while countering threats. fun times!!

xram666 on EDH pauper Glassdust Hulk

1 year ago

Nice deck.

You could add cards like Horseshoe Crab for synergy with Banishing Knack and Retraction Helix. Not as good as Mirran Spy or Battered Golem but it would make the deck more consistent.

TriusMalarky on Any Complicated Commanders?

3 years ago

Mairsil, the Pretender . Best win con is Mirror-Mad Phantasm , Dread Return and Thassa's Oracle . Make sure not to include Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact if you're staying on lower power, but you can add them if you go cEDH.

Buried Alive , Gamble and Entomb are all really really good with Mairsil as lower-priced tutors.

You get tons of fun synergy, but the best things to have caged are Arcanis the Omnipotent , AEtherling , Staff of Domination , and Lazav, the Multifarious . Include Civilized Scholar  ^Flip and Necrotic Ooze , and you get another way to mill your deck with Scholar + Ooze/Lazav + Golgari Thug / Stinkweed Imp .

You can run infinite mana combos with Gilded Lotus and Quicksilver Elemental and any way to untap like Horseshoe Crab or Cinderhaze Wretch .

There's also a ton of random infinite loops possible with Mairsil, as well as great ways to get tons of value. You are really reliant on your commander, but then again you also only need to cast Mairsil again and you can get back into the game.

Oh, and Tim. Hell's Caretaker 's Legends printing art is awesome.

ninetoe on Yarok, the Triggered

3 years ago

And definitely would add Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Thrasios, Triton Hero . Both are extremely powerful in this color wedge, and enable you to make more mana off your dorks and then do interesting things with that mana. Seeing as your deck is mostly creature based, Kinnan can help you find exactly the creatures you want and "cheat" them onto the field. Thrasios helps you filter through your deck faster, get lands onto the field. And--if you have infinite mana--from say, Peregrine Drake + Deadeye Navigator or from Cryptolith Rite + Horseshoe Crab + Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy then you can use Thrasios to draw out your entire deck and do fun things with that.

If you decide to go this route, I would also look at Pili-Pala + Heavy Arbalest , bc that plus Kinnan is inifinite damage, for the low cost of 2 generic mana. (just spend 2 mana from any source to untap Pili-Pala to get 2 mana, tap it for dmg from Heavy Arbalest, use the 2 mana to untap it again to net that 2 mana right back to you... rinse repeat to infinity). Maybe that's for a different deck though.

Reznorboy on Tutoring a new edh player

3 years ago

If you do decide to build Mairsil, the Pretender, basically what you do is you make half your deck cards that have an activated ability, then lands and little bit of other whatever.

Some really good cards for Mairsil with activated abilities are:

Blighted Bat (Gives haste)

Cinderhaze Wretch (Discard+Untap)

Doom Whisperer (Mills, good for setting up Mairsil)

Horseshoe Crab (Untaps)

Kozilek, the Great Distortion (Counters stuff)

Mirror-Mad Phantasm (Not sure about ruling, but dumps portion of library in grave)

Morphling (Untap+Shroud)

Quicksilver Elemental (Targeting Mairsil, makes it so he can do his abilities any number of times per turn, it's gnarly)

Pendant of Prosperity (Again, weird rulings, but I believe it gives you crazy value because you control Mairsil aka Pendant and your its owner.)

Gilded Lotus (Should hopefully be obvious)

MagicMarc on Favorite non meta creature

3 years ago

For White: Preacher. My all time favorite white creature. This guy has gotten more popular over the years but I never saw it in anyone else's deck until commander got popular. The fact you make them choose just sweetens how messed up this card is.
For Blue: Horseshoe Crab. People don't throw removal at it, until they've seen what I do with it.
For Red: Spikeshot Goblin: It is so easy to make this guy oppressive and it's activation is 1 mana. Combined with Grafted Wargear this goblin is better than Lightning Bolt.
For Black: Festering Goblin. It can 2 for 1 early game and sometimes screws combat math for surprise kills of creatures.
For Green:Fertilid has become less unmeta but great card. I even have combo decks built around abusing this guy.

For Multicolor: Swarm Guildmage. No one remembers or hears when you say +1/+0 and menace.
For Multicolor: Tamanoa. This card screams at you to abuse it. I have half a dozen decks abusing this card. Outside of my immediate playgroup

jaymc1130 on

3 years ago

From a competitive standpoint the deck is running so little interaction and protection as it stands that it won't ever be able to hold up in competitive settings.

You'll definitely want each of these pieces of interaction in a Kinnan helmed deck at a minimum:

xCounterspell xMental Misstep xDispel xFlusterstorm xMuddle the Mixture xCyclonic Rift xChain of Vapor xNature's Claim xFierce Guardianship xVeil of Summer xPongify/Rapid Hybridization

As it stands that won't be quite enough pieces to consistently have the access to permission and protection elements to remain in a competitive position in most game states and these pieces are worth running much of the time:

xNegate xDelay xInto the Roil/2cmc bounce spells (UG has very limited access to tools that can remove hate pieces from the board that prevent a win like Grafdigger's Cage, Notion Thief, or Narset, Parter of Veils.) xBeast Within

As an additional note about competitive Kinnan builds, you can lose the Dramatic Scepter stuff entirely. There's no need in a Kinnan deck. The most effective and efficient method of generating the infinite combo needed to win is any dork that can produce U and G mana combined with Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura. Basalt Monolith is worth running in Kinnan decks because it generates infinite colorless with just Kinnan out on the field also, so you can usually get a couple of Kinnan activations off to dig for Thrasios. For the mana dork complement it's best to stick with BoP, all the 1 cmc tap for G elf dorks, and then a handful of 2 cmc "tap for any color" dorks. The most effective back up infinite mana engines for a Kinnan deck are typically Simic Ragworm or Horseshoe Crab paired with Paradise Mantle and the Monolith (which is often why the deck runs Staff of Domination as an additional outlet that's easy to tutor for in the colors) rather than Dramatic Scepter combo as the Scepter combo relies on density of dorks and rocks to be engaged and this can be more difficult than a less card intensive engine (Crab, Mantle, Kinnan is 3 cards with one from the command zone compared to Kinnan, Dramatic Reversal, Isochron Scepter, 2 mana rocks/dorks at 5 cards to engage) and thus less reliable for the game play patterns Kinnan wants to ideally play from. Shapers of Nature and Thrasios, Triton Hero are the standard outlets that will eventually be found from Kinnan activations that allow you to draw the whole deck. From there winning is easy, so stick to win conditions that are more live than things like Blue Sun's Zenith and run Thassa's Oracle plus a looping mechanism (such as Narset's Reversal and Timetwister or Elixir of Immortality) to use the interaction pieces like Swan Song and Pongify as the win conditions (this helps to avoid other issues too, like not being able to win with Oracle due to Angel's Grace, etc, in addition to improving card slot efficiency). Green Sun's Zenith and Drift of Phantasms are generally considered must runs as tutor options for competitive Kinnan lists, but a good number of quality tutor options are available to provide consistency. Incubation Druid+Vigean Graftmage is somewhat popular as another back up 3 card game winning infinite combo line.

Valengeta on Crab pot

3 years ago

The idea looks fun but I would redesign this into a Mill deck. You can still use the crabs you have, plus you can use Horseshoe Crab and Ancient Crab in combo with Phenax, God of Deception. Take advantage of those crabs' high toughness.

Fraying Sanity helps you win the match much faster. Visions of Beyond is a cheap hand-refuel card if you follow the Mill idea.

After that you need spells to answer your enemy's moves. Counterspells and removal will help you survive. There's also a lot of non-creature spells that Mill, like Glimpse the Unthinkable.

Other than all of this, if you continue to use Iceberg Cancrix switch your lands to Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Forest or Snow-Covered Swamp